The Löwenbräukeller beer hall was located at Nymphenburgerstrasse #4 on Stiglmaier Plaza in Munich, and it was where Hitler commanded the SA to break up a meeting of the rival Bavarian League on September 14, 1921, also ordering its main speaker—Otto Ballerstedt— to be assaulted, too.

On November 8–9, 1923, at Munich’s Burgerbraukeller beer hall, Hitler attempted to seize first that
city, then Bavaria, and finally the Reich by force, just as
Benito Mussolini had done in Italy almost exactly a year
before; however, Hitler failed miserably. On the night of 8
November. Ernst Röhm and some 2,000 SA, Bund Oberland, and
Reichskriegflagge men assembled at the Lowenbräukeller where they
received the code word from the Burgerbräu to march in support of the
coup. Following that
abysmal debacle, Hitler decided that, in the future, he
would gain office only through legal means—and did a
decade later, replacing the old state with a new, Nazi model
that was built up during the intervening ten years by himself and the Party.

In 1939, Hitler cut short his Putsch commemorative speech in the same hall and left it just before an explosion that killed or wounded several Party members—
an event still not entirely explained. Following the destruction of the Burgerbraukeller by Georg Elser’s bomb
blast on November 8, 1939, the Führer and others honoured the anniversary of the 1923 Burgerbraukeller Putsch
at the Lowenbraukeller throughout the rest of the war. On November 8 1940,

the annual commemorative festivities began in the Löwenbräukeller in Munich. The usual site for the celebrations, the
Bürgerbräukeller, destroyed in the mysterious explosion of the previous
year, had not yet been completely restored. Though not invited to
attend the 1940 festivities, the Royal Air Force nonetheless called at
Munich to contribute a special fireworks display in the skies above the
Bavarian capital.

Kershaw writes how, on the late afternoon of 8 November 1941, Hitler gave a speech intended primarily for domestic consumption.

It aimed to boost morale, and to rally round the oldest and most loyal members of Hitler’s retinue after the difficult months of summer and autumn. Hitler described the scale of the Soviet losses. ‘My Party Comrades,’ he declared, ‘no army in the world, including the Russian, recovers from those.’ ‘Never before,’ he went on, ‘has a giant empire been smashed and struck down in a shorter time than Soviet Russia.’ He remarked on enemy claims that the war would last into 1942. ‘It can last as long as it wants,’ he retorted. ‘The last battalion in this field will be a German one.’ Despite the triumphalism, it was the strongest hint yet that the war was far from over.

The following year

when Hitler travelled to Munich to give his traditional address in the
Löwenbräukeller to the marchers in the 1923 Putsch, the news from the Mediterranean had
dramatically worsened. En route from Berlin to Munich, his special train was halted at a small
station in the Thuringian Forest for him to receive a message from the Foreign Office: the Allied
armada assembled at Gibraltar, which had for days given rise to speculation about a probable
landing in Libya, was disembarking in Algiers and Oran. It would bring the first commitment of
American ground-troops to the war in Europe.

This happened to be the same day as the Anglo-American landings in
North Africa and less than a week after the defeat of General Erwin
Rommel’s Africa Corps by the British at El Alamein. Normally, considering how catastrophic the effect of the Allied
landing had been on public opinion in Germany, Hitler would never
have given a speech. But what else could he do? After all, he had used
the commemoration of November 8 as a pretext for his stay at the
Berghof. He had no choice but to speak at the Löwenbräukeller in spite
of everything.473 Not surprisingly, the speech was one of the most
miserable he ever gave. The “old marchers of 1923” were so preoccupied
with thoughts of the Allied landing that they even forgot at times to
applaud the Führer’s most rousing proclamations. In fact, the opening lines of this speech were used at the beginning of the film Downfall when Hitler is made to dictate them for Traudl to type out for the qualification test:

My German Volksgenossen!
Party Comrades! I believe it is quite rare when a man can appear
before his supporters after almost 20 years and, in these 20 years, did
not need to make any changes whatsoever in his programme.

On November 9, 1943, the Führer celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Burgerbraukeller Putsch with a
speech before the Nazi Party Old Fighters at the
Lowenbraukeller. In addition to the dead of 1923, Hitler
added the commemoration of the casualties of the war from
1939–43, hoping to shore up support for himself, the Party,
the regime, and the war in Munich—the vaunted “Capital
of the Movement.”

When (for the last time, as it turned out) Hitler addressed the party’s Old Guard in Munich’s
Löwenbräukeller on the putsch anniversary, 8 November, he was as defiant as ever. There would
be no capitulation, no repeat of 1918, he declared once again – the nightmare of that year
indelibly imprinted on his psyche – and no undermining of the front by subversion at home. Any
overheard subversive or defeatist remark, it was clear, would cost the person making it his or her
head. (Kershaw)

I learn from Hitler’s captured daily calendar book that the celebration had been moved from the old Buergerbraukeller, where the putsch had taken place, to a more elegant beer hall in Munich, the Loewenbraukeller. The Buergerbraukeller, it will be remembered, had been wrecked by a time bomb which had just missed killing the Fuehrer on the night of November 8, 1939.

Hitler and other Nazi officials celebrate Christmas at a party for ϟϟ officer cadets at the Lowenbraukeller on December 18, 1941.

Christmas then and now

Nazi Party Headquarters, November 1921 to July 1925

The site of another party headquarters at Corneliusstraße 12

The dismal back room at the Sterneckerbrau which had served as a committee-room was abandoned for new and larger offices at 12 Corneliusstrasse. Bit by bit they accumulated office furniture, files, a typewriter, and a telephone.

After eighteen months our business quarters had become too small, so we moved to a new place in the Cornelius Strasse. Again our office was in a restaurant, but instead of one room we now had three smaller rooms and one large room with great windows. At that time this appeared a wonderful thing to us. We remained there until the end of November 1923.

Memorial to Freikorps

The German army’s impotence after the Great War was apparent on Christmas Eve when its troops, ordered to remove radicals from the Royal Stables, dispersed and went home. It was thus that a proposal was made to supplement the Reichsheer through a broad creation of Freikorps units made up of volunteers which existed in some fashion from late 1918 until 1923 who would defend the new Republic. The best known of the volunteers were the Freikorps, or regular volunteers

consisting of officers and soldiers, as well as students and civilians, driven by counterrevolutionary zeal, eager for adventure, or simply seeking the ‘‘companionship of the trenches’’ and regular meals. Numbering 200,000 to 400,000 men by the spring of 1919, the 103 major Freikorps units received little direct attention from the Reichsheer and were militarily and politically unreliable. During the first half of 1919 they were used to crush both real and imagined threats throughout Germany.

Vincent (137) An Historical Dictionary of Germany’s Weimar Republic

The remains of a 1942 Nazi memorial to the Freikorps victory over the communists in Munich in May 1919 remains on Ichostrasse, apparently as a memorial to victims of Nazism, although the various symbols appear intentionally vague:

By May 2, 1919, the Freikorps and a coalition of Prussian and Bavarian troops, collectively known as the known as the Weisse Garde, had taken the City of Munich. It was not officially announced secure until May 6 after roughly 1,200 Communists had been killed.

The White force had in it hardened desperadoes and they shot down without cause some twenty medical orderlies and eight surrendered Red soldiers. Most infamously, the Reds executed ten people by firing squad, including the Countess Westarp. This killing was the direct result of the White atrocities at Dachau which had caused Red soldiers to ask superiors if they could take revenge. Permission was granted and the victims were rounded up and brought to courtyard of the Luitpold gymnasium. In pairs, they were placed against a wall and shot. The news of this horrific event spread quickly and, by midday of 1 May, the killings had become public knowledge. There were protest meetings all over the city, and firefights erupted.The Whites had decided to move on 2 May. They now advanced the attack to May Day. It was held to be just and proper that they were moving into the capital on the traditional workers’ holiday. As the Whites took Munich, atrocities appeared seemingly everywhere. All White killings were said to be justified by the Luitpold executions. The Luitpold killings had also had a demoralizing impact on Red troops not involved but who had heard of them. They began throwing down their arms, as the Whites entered the city to encounter scant opposition.The Munich political scene, immediately after the demise of the Red Republics, was profoundly altered. The disappearance of the two republics resulted in an atmosphere changed lastingly... This was the heritage which carried over into the scene after the war.

On 16 October he was one of 111 people to attend a meeting at the
Hofbrauhauskeller, at which Dr Erich Kühn, editor of the
radical nationalist journal Deutschlands Emeuerung (Germany’s Renewal), spoke about
the Jewish Question. Hitler spoke too. A reporter from the Munich Observer
reported that he ‘used inflammatory words’ and incited those present against
especially the Jewish press. Three days later, and
notwithstanding Drexler’s prior offer, Hitler wrote requesting membership of the
[German Workers'] party.

Housden (45) Hitler Study of a Revolutionary?

A
hundred and eleven people turned up, and Hitler rose to address his
first public meeting as the second speaker of the evening. In a bitter
stream of words the dammed-up emotions, the lonely man’s suffocated
feelings of hatred and impotence, burst out; like an explosion after the
restriction and apathy of the past years, hallucinatory images and
accusations came pouring out; abandoning restraint, he talked till he
was sweating and exhausted. ‘I spoke for thirty minutes,’ he writes,
‘and what I had always felt deep down in my heart, without being able to
put it to the test, proved to be true.’ Jubilantly he made the
overwhelming, liberating discovery. ‘I could make a good speech!

Following the military defeat of the Munich Soviet Republic, these workers and craftsmen were denounced and without legal judicial proceedings were taken by the Freikorps Lützow on 5 May 1919 to the garden of the Hofbräuhaus Keller and murdered.

Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten

The Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten on Maximilianstraße where the Thule Society was founded in the early 1920s and had its headquarters.

Members of the Thule Society, a right-wing, völkisch, anti-Semitic organisation, had got hold of the stamp of the Communist military chief of Munich, the twenty-one-year-old deserter from the navy Rudolf Eglhofer, and used it to forge orders and requisitions. Ten of the members of the Thule Society were taken as hostages from a meeting at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, and then, as the government forces converged on Munich, they were executed in the courtyard of the Luitpold gymnasium as a reprisal for the deaths of eight members of the Red Guard who had been killed at Dachau.

The ceremonial foundation of the Thule Society took place on 17 August 1918. The society met at the fashionable Hotel Vierjahreszeiten in Munich, in rooms decorated with the Thule emblem: a long dagger, its blade surrounded by oak leaves, superimposed on a shining, curved- armed swastika.

Lieutenant-Colonel Hoßbach, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant, was ordered to
present himself the next morning in the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Munich. When he arrived,
Hitler was still in bed. Only shortly before midday was the military adjutant summoned to be told
that the Führer had decided to reintroduce conscription in the immediate future – a move which
would in the eyes of the entire world graphically demonstrate Germany’s newly regained
autonomy and cast aside the military restrictions of Versailles.

Kershaw Hitler

Richard Evans destroys David Irving's credibility when the latter referred to the hotel in Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reichduring the events of Reichskristallnacht in his attempts to absolve Hitler from all blame of the violence:

WHAT of Himmler and Hitler? Both were totally unaware of what Goebbels had done until the synagogue next to Munich’s Four Seasons Hotel was set on fire around one a.m. Heydrich, Himmler’s national chief of police, was relaxing down in the hotel bar; he hurried up to Himmler’s room, then telexed instructions to all police authorities to restore law and order, protect Jews and Jewish property, and halt any on- going incidents. The hotel management telephoned Hitler’s apartment at Prinz- Regenten-Platz, and thus he too learned that something was going on. He sent for the local police chief, Friedrich von Eberstein. Eberstein found him livid with rage.

In fact, Evans points out

The only historical truth in this account was the assertion that Heydrich sent a telex to the German police authorities. Everything else was a blatant manipulation of the historical record. Even a cursory glance at the telex showed that it ordered the opposite of what Irving claimed it did. What Heydrich was telling the police was not to prevent the destruction of Jewish property or get in the way of violent acts against German Jews.

This was also where Daladier and his entourage stayed September 29, 1938 during the Munich conference whilst Chamberlain and the Czech representatives went to the Regina Palast Hotel on Maximiliansplatz 5:

The hotel also plays a significant role in the Fleming novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service after James Bond arrives in Munich from Zurich where he is met at the airport by his fiancée Tracy, who drives him to her “favourite hotel in the world.” Bond drinks at the hotel bar and makes plans to dine at Walterspiel’s which had once been located inside the hotel.

Editorial Offices of Munchner Neueste Nachrichten

Memorial plaque to Dr. Fritz Gerlich, editor-in-chief and subject of film "Hitler: The Rise of Evil." After the Nazis seized power in Germany, they quickly decided to remove Gerlich as shown in this scene from the film where he is arrested on March 9, 1933 and brought to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered on July 1, 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives according to David Irving, through the orders of Hermann Göring:

Who, other than Göring, would have ordered the pickax murder of seventy-one- year-old ex-dictator Gustav von Kahr and Munich journalist Fritz Gerlich? Kahr had betrayed the 1923 beer hall putsch. Gerlich had claimed that Göring broke his word of honour to escape; Göring had sued him for libel and lost. Now both those old scores were settled, permanently.

After his death his wife received confirmation of her husband's death when his blood-spattered glasses were delivered to her home.

At Gerlich's former residence this plaque was placed: "The journalist Dr. Fritz Gerlich lived in this house up to his arrest on 9.3.1933. As an opponent of the Third Reich he was murdered on 30.6.1934 in the KZ Dachau." The video on the right is from Hitler: Rise of Evil

Ron Rosenbaum writes of

'the lost safe-deposit box. A place where allegedly revelatory
documents - ones that might provide the missing link, the lost key to the Hitler psyche, the
true source of his metamorphosis - seem to disappear beyond recovery." This
mythology was inspired by real events in Munich in 1933, when Fritz Gerlich, the last anti-
Hitler journalist in that city, made a desperate attempt to alert the world to the true nature
of Hitler by means of a report of an unspecified scandal. On 9 March, just as Gerlich's
newspaper, Der Gerade Weg, was about to go to press, SA storm troopers entered the
premises and ripped it from the presses.

Although no copy of the Gerlich report has ever been found, rumours have been
circulating for many years about the ultimate fate of the information with which Gerlichhoped to warn the world of the danger of Hitler, one of which involves a secret copy of the
report that was smuggled out of the premises (along with supporting documentary
material) by one Count Waldburg-Zeil. Waldburg-Zeil allegedly took the report and its
supporting documents to his estate north of Munich, where he buried them somewhere in
the grounds. According to Gerlich's biographer Erwin von Aretin, however, Waldburg-Zeil
destroyed them during the war, fearful of what might happen should they be discovered by
the Nazi authorities.

Rosenbaum informs us of an alternative version of these events, involving documents
proving that Geli Raubal was indeed killed on the orders of Adolf Hitler. According to von
Aretin's son, the historian Professor Karl-Ottmar Freiherr von Aretin, his father gave the
documents to his cousin, Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Guttenberg, co-owner of the
Munchener Neueste Nachrichten, who put them in a safe-deposit box in Switzerland.
Guttenberg was killed following his involvement in the attempted coup against Hitler on 20
July 1944. For the sake of security, he had not told anyone the number of the safe-
deposit-box account.

Baker Invisible Eagle

Maximilianeum and the Maximilianbrücke

The Maximilianeum, a palatial building in Munich, was built as the home of a gifted students' foundation and has also housed the Bavarian Landtag (state parliament) since 1949. The principal was King Maximilian II of Bavaria, who started the project in 1857. The leading architect was Friedrich Bürklein. The building is situated on the bank of river Isar before the Maximilian Bridge and marks the eastern end of the Maximilianstrasse, one of Munich's royal avenues which is framed by neo-Gothic palaces influenced by the English Perpendicular style. Due to statical problems the construction was only completed in 1874 and the façade of the Maximilianeum which was originally planned also in neo-Gothic style had to be altered in renaissance style under the influence of Gottfried Semper. The façade was decorated with arches, columns, mosaics and niches filled with busts. The building was extended on its back for new parliament offices, several modern wings were added in 1958, 1964, 1992 and again in 2012.

Apparently Hitler's own painting on the left beside a turn-of-the-century postcardLooking out towards the town centre from inside during MUNOM 2010

German Research institute for Psychiatry (Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie)Kraepelinstr. 2

Opened in 1917, it served during the NS time in the intellectual preparation and “justification” of the murder of “lebensunwert”. In 1934 it sponsored the “Law for Preventing Hereditary Illness into the Next Generation” ("Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses") and approved of patient killings.

Research on eugenics was done primarily at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem (directed by Eugen Fischer from 1927, its founding, to 1942, and by Otmar von Verschuer from 1942 to 1945) and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt (directed by Ernst Riidin) in Munich.

The Asamkirche on Sendlinger Straße in the centre of the City, built between 1733-1746, was the subject of an Hitler drawing. St. Johann Nepomuk, better known as the Asam Church is a church in Munich, southern Germany, built from 1733 to 1746 by the brothers Egid Quirin Asam and Cosmas Damian Asam as their private church. Due to resistance of the citizens, the brothers were forced to make the church accessible to the public. The church is considered to be one of the most important buildings of the main representatives of the southern German Late Baroque.[1] Contents 1 Architecture 2 Asamhaus 3 External links 4 References Architecture The church was built without an order, as a private chapel for the greater glory of God and for the salvation of the builders. This allowed the brothers also to build in line with the ideas of independent contractors. So for example Egid Quirin Asam could watch the altar through a window of his private house next to the church (Asamhaus). Egid Quirin Asam designed the church as Beichtkirche (confession church) for the youth. So the small church has seven confessionals with allegorical scenes. The Baroque façade is integrated into the houses of the Sendlingerstraße and swings slightly convex outward. St. Johann Nepomuk was built in a confined space, the property is just 22 by 8 m. Even more astonishing is the performance of the two builders who were able to unite in the two-story space architecture, painting and sculpture in harmony. Especially the indirect lighting in the choir area is very well done: hidden behind the cornice window the Trinity figures are illuminated effective from behind. The cornice itself seems to swing up and down on its curved construction. The interior is divided vertically into three sections, which increase in brightness from the bottom upwards. The lowermost portion of the benches for the church visitors is kept relatively dark and in the design symbolizes the suffering of the world. The second section, located above, is kept white and blue, and reserved for the emperor. The uppermost portion of the indirect and hidden illuminated ceiling painting is dedicated to God and eternity. The ceiling fresco "Life of Saint Nepomuk" is considered one of the masterpieces by Cosmas Damian Asam. The high altar of the Asam Church is framed by four spiral columns. At the high altar, these four columns are used as a reference to the four-Bernini columns over the grave of St. Peter in St. Peter's in Rome. Previously, the brothers Asam had studied in Italy, at the Accademia di San Luca, under Lorenzo Bernini. At the top is God, the Saviour. Below the tabernacle, a relic of John of Nepomuk is kept. Two angels, sculpted by Ignaz Günther, flank the gallery altar and were added at a later date. Compared to a usually very strictly divided baroque church the Asamkirche has shows some peculiarities due to its status as a private chapel: The church altar is situated in the west, not the east as usual. In addition, the crucifix opposite the pulpit was hung lower too low. In Baroque churches it was to hang above the pulpit, so that the preacher had to look up to Jesus Christ. In a bomb attack in 1944, the choir was heavily damaged, with the interior restoration from 1975 to 1983 according to source study was done a hypothetical original appearance of the choir. Asamhaus The Asams had bought four houses for their project, the southern house was built already in the 16th century. When Egid took possession of the house as his home, he sculpted lavish stucco ornamentation for the exterior, as it was typical for the South German rococo, an ornament technique inspired by Lüftlmalerei (an artistic expression of paintings on the outside walls of houses in Bavaria and Tyrol). The two houses in the middle were demolished to build the church. The northern house became the house for the priest, it also shows a rococo façade.

The other painting above is the Alten Residenz, the Alter Hof, which was home to Bavarian dukes, electors and kings. The painting shows its inner courtyard (bombed in 1944) by Hitler himself in 1914.The Alte Hof (Old Court) in the center of Munich is the former imperial residence of Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor and consists of five wings Burgstock, Zwingerstock, Lorenzistock, Pfisterstock and Brunnenstock. Like most of the old town, it was rebuilt after being destroyed in World War II. Alter Hof (Burgstock) Archeological excavations have shown that a castle already existed there in the 12th century. After the first partition of Bavaria in 1255 the Alte Hof became the residence of Louis II, Duke of Bavaria in the then very northeastern part of the city. The castle was the first permanent imperial residence in the Holy Roman Empire under his son Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor. The St. Lorenz Chapel at the north side, which was demolished in the 19th century, once housed the regalia of the House of Wittelsbach. After some uprisings the castle became too unsafe and in the course of an extension of the town, together with the construction of a new, double-ring wall, the Wittelsbach dukes once again chose the very northeastern corner as the construction site for a ducal keep. Consequently, as it was newly erected, the castle was called "Neuveste", new fortress. Over the course of centuries the building at this site would eventually develop into what is nowadays the Residenz. Thus, from the 15th century onwards the old castle was only seat of several governmental departments. The late Gothic westwings (the Burgstock with its tower and its decorated bay window and the Zwingerstock), which were altered under Duke Sigismund have been preserved. After destructions in World War II the castle was reconstructed. Portions of it (Lorenzistock, Pfisterstock and Brunnenstock) were redeveloped in post modernist style to serve as offices and luxury apartments in 2005/2006, very much to public dismay. The castle also houses a "tourist information centre for Bavarian castles". The mint yard (Alte Münze) The mint yard An arch in the north connects the castle with a renaissance building which originally served for the ducal stables and the art collections of Albert V, Duke of Bavaria. It was constructed by court architect Wilhelm Egkl in 1563. Later it served as mint. The inner courtyard has kept its renaissance arcades while the west façade was redesigned in neoclassical style in 1809. Finally the north facade facing got its neogothic decoration when the Maximilianstrasse was built to fit it with the concept of this royal avenue.

From a Nazi-era postcard and little Drake Winston at the site at night. According to Kershaw, Hitler

usually copied from postcards of well-known tourist scenes in Munich – including the
Theatinerkirche, the Asamkirche, the Hofbräuhaus, the Alter Hof, the Münzhof, the Altes Rathaus,
the Sendlinger Tor, the Residenz, the Propyläen – then set out to find customers in bars, cafés, and
beerhalls. His accurate but uninspired, rather soulless watercolours were, as Hitler himself later
admitted when he was German Chancellor and they were selling for massively inflated prices, of
very ordinary quality. But they were certainly no worse than similar products touted about the
beerhalls, often the work of genuine art students seeking to pay their way. Once he had found his
feet, Hitler had no difficulty finding buyers. He was able to make a modest living from his
painting and exist about as comfortably as he had done in his last years in Vienna. When the Linz
authorities caught up with him in 1914, he acknowledged that his income – though irregular and
fluctuating – could be put at around 1,200 Marks a year, and told his court photographer Heinrich
Hoffmann at a much later date that he could get by on around 80 Marks a month for living costs
at that time.

Nornenbrunnen

The Nornenbrunnen was completed in 1907 after a design by Hubert Netzer in the art nouveau style. Using Kirchheimer shell limestone, it shows the Nornen, the three Germanic fates: Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, who leans towards the large water bowl. Between the figures are three muzzles, from which the water pours in three flat basin at the ground.

In 1920 Arno Breker, who would become Hitler's official sculptor, moved into an artists’ dormitory and matriculated at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf, where he spent five years studying sculpture with Netzer.

Meanwhile,
Adolf von Hildebrand's Wittelsbacher-Brunnen at Lenbachplatz can be
seen in the photo on the left behind a marching band of SA.

The Mercedes-Benz showroom at Lenbachplatz, April 1935 as shown in Kershaw's Hitler, and now replaced by BMW

Reichsfinanzhof

Currently
serving as the Bundesfinanzhof, the highest tax court, from 1933
the judgements here provided the legal justification for the
expropriation of political opponents and Jews, the latter through the
"Reichsfluchtsteuer". From the 1939 directory:Reich
Finance Court in Munich (Reichsfinanzhof zu München) Ismaningerstrasse
109; Telephone: 480255/6 The Reich Finance Court is the supreme
court in Reich tax matters. In final appeal proceedings it hands down
decisions in cases especially referred to it by law. The Senate of
the Reich Finance Court, composed of five members, including the
chairman, decides in legal complaint cases. At the final vote the
case is decided by the votes of at least three members, including the
chairman. The Reich Finance Court is the supreme authority in
respect to real property taxes, in so far as the taxes are
administered by state offices and Oberfinanzpräsidenten (Chief
Finance Presidents). In addition, upon application of a Land (state)
government, the Reich Finance Minister can designate the Reich
Finance Court as the supreme court for the taxes of the states
(Länder), communes, communal associations and religious societies.

Deutschen Museum

The Deutsches Museum (which means German Museum) (German: Deutsches Museum or Das Deutsche Museum)[note 1] in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science and technology,[1] with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology.The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) as an initiative of Oskar von Miller. Its official name is Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik (English: German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology). It is the largest museum in Munich.Contents1 Museumsinsel2 Other sites3 Oskar von Miller4 History4.1 Chronology5 Current permanent exhibits6 Trivia7 See also8 References8.1 Footnote8.2 Notes8.3 Bibliography9 External linksMuseumsinsel Deutsches Museum, view of the museum islandThe main site of the Deutsches Museum is a small island in the Isar river, which had been used for rafting wood since the Middle Ages. The island did not have any buildings before 1772 because it was regularly flooded prior to the building of the Sylvensteinspeicher.In 1772 the Isar barracks were built on the island and, after the flooding of 1899, the buildings were rebuilt with flood protection. In 1903 the city council announced that they would donate the island for the newly built Deutsches Museum. The island formerly known as Kohleninsel (coal island) was then renamed Museumsinsel (museum island).[2][3] Other sitesIn addition to the main site on the Museumsinsel, the museum has two branches in and near Munich and one in Bonn.The Flugwerft Schleißheim branch is located some 18 kilometres north of Munich's city centre close to Schleißheim Palace. It is based on the premises of one of the first military airbases in Germany founded just before World War I. It comprises the old air control and command centre as well as modern buildings added in the late 2000s after strong endorsement from Franz-Josef Strauss, the then prime minister of the state of Bavaria, who was a passionate flyer. Deutsches Museum BonnThe "Flugwerft Schleißheim" displays various interesting airplanes for which there was insufficient room at the "Museumsinsel" site in downtown Munich. Among the more prominent exhibits is a Horten flying wing glider built in the 1940s, restored from the few surviving parts. A collection of the German constructions of VTOL (vertical take off and landing) planes developed in the 1950s and 1960s is unique. A range of Vietnam era fighter planes as well as Russian planes taken over from East Germany after the reunification are on display. This outstation also features a workshop dedicated to the restoration of all types of airplanes intended for static display.The latest branch of the Deutsches Museum, located at Theresienhöhe in Munich, opened in 2003 and is called the Deutsches Museum Verkehrszentrum and is focused on transportation technology.The branch located in Bonn was opened in 1995 and focuses on German technology, science and research after 1945. Oskar von Miller Oskar von MillerOskar von Miller studied electrical engineering and is otherwise known for building the first high voltage line from Miesbach to Munich (57 km) in 1882 for the electrical technology exhibition at the Glaspalast in Munich. In 1883 he joined AEG and founded an engineering office in Munich. The Frankfurt electricity exhibition in 1891 and several power plants contributed to the reputation of Oskar von Miller. In the early years, the exhibition and the collection of the Deutsches Museum were strongly influenced personally by Oskar von Miller. HistoryA few months before the 1903 meeting of the Society of German Engineers, Oskar von Miller gathered a small group who supported his desire to found a science and technology museum. In a showing of support this group spontaneously donated 260,000 marks to the cause and elected a "Provisional Committee" to get the ball rolling. Model train set with many of Europe's rail makesIn June 1903 Prince Ludwig agreed to act as patron of the museum and the city of Munich donated Coal Island as a site for the project. In addition, exhibits began to arrive from Munich, Germany, and abroad including collections from the Bavarian Academy. As no dedicated museum building existed the exhibits were displayed in the National Museum.On November 12, 1906 the temporary exhibits at the National Museum are ceremonially opened to the public and on November 13 the foundation stone was laid for the permanent museum.The first name of the museum, the "German Museum for Masterpieces of Natural Science and Technology", was not meant to limit the museum to German advances in science and technology, but to express the importance of science and technology to the German people.Oskar von Miller opened the new museum on his 70th birthday, 2 May 1925, after a delay of almost ten years. From the beginning the museum displays are backed up by documents available in a public library and archives, which are open seven days a week to ensure access to the working public. Clean white lines of the museum's winding staircaseBefore and during World War II the museum was put on a shoestring budget by the Nazi party and many exhibits were allowed to get out of date with a few exceptions such as the new automobile room dedicated 7 May 1937. By the end of 1944 the museum was badly damaged by air bombings with 80% of the buildings and 20% of the exhibits damaged or destroyed. As Allied troops marched into Munich in April 1945 museum director Karl Bässler barely managed to keep the last standing bridge to Museum Island from being blown up by retreating German troops.Following the war the museum had to be closed for repairs and temporary tenants, such as the College of Technology and the Post Office used museum space as their own buildings were being reconstructed. The Museum was also home to the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews, representing Jewish displaced persons in the American Zone of Germany after the war.In November 1945 the library was able to reopen, followed by the congress hall in January 1946. A special exhibit on fifty years of the Diesel engine was able to open in October 1947 and the regular exhibits began reopening in May 1948. Not until 1965, more than twenty years after the end of the war in Germany, did the exhibit area match (and then exceed) pre-war size.During the 1950s the museum focused on natural sciences rather than technology and many of the traditional large exhibits, such as civil engineering, were reduced in size to make way for more modern technological advances. Reproduction of cave of Altamira in Deutsches Museum.In August 1969 the Apollo 8 space capsule was shown in a special exhibit entitled "Man and Space" and in 1970 the first full-time director, Theo Stillger, was appointed. In the 1970s the mission statement of the museum was modified to encourage the explanation of the cultural significance of science and technology in exhibits. The early 1980s saw severe damage to several exhibits due to arson resulting in the smallest exhibit space of 34,140 square meters. This was followed by an extensive reconstruction effort and additional building bringing the total exhibit space to 55,000 square meters by 1993. The 1980s and '90s also brought agreements with the Science Centre in Bonn and the government resulting in the creation of Deutsches Museum Bonn and the Flugwerft Schleißheim airfield exhibit. Glass Fowl from glass section of museum souvenir shopIn 1996 the Bavarian Government gave buildings at the historic Theresienhöhe site in Munich to the Deutsches Museum resulting in the creation of the new transportation museum, the Deutsches Museum Verkehrszentrum, which opened in 2003 and now houses the road vehicle and train exhibits that were removed from the original Deutsches Museum site. The Theresienhöhe quarter is a new area on the edge of the inner city of Munich, and the Museum of Transport is a part of the quarter's design of mixed use. Chronology1903 Museum's foundation1906 Opening the provisional collections in the rooms of the former National Museum in Maximilianstrasse1909 Opening additional collections in the old barracks on the Isar (Ehrhardtstraße)1911 Topping out ceremony of collection house1925 Opening of the Deutsches Museum in the new building on Museum Island1928 Laying the foundation stone for the library and hall1930 Topping out ceremony of the library and hall1932 Opening of the library1935 Opening of the Congress Center1944 Destruction of 80 percent of the building1948 Reopening after the destruction1983 Destruction of marine and engine sections by fire1984 Opening of the new hall for Aerospace; temporary closure of some departments to hail and water damage1992 Opening of the Schleißheim's Aviation Museum at the Oberschleißheim's airport1995 Opening a branch of the Deutsches Museum in Bonn2003 Opening of the Transportation Center on the former exhibition grounds2006 Opening the Halls I and II of Transportation Center on the Theresienhöhe

Hitler toured the museum on April 1, 1935. The
museum had hosted a set of ideological Special exhibitions, which were
conceived in Munich as itinerant exhibitions. 1936 saw the opening of
the anti-Semitic and antisoviet propaganda exhibition "Der
Bolschewismus" in the presence of representatives from 37 states. It
had 350,000 visitors, who were brought in by special trains from
throughout Europe. On the left, Joseph
Goebbels and other Nazi officials are greeted by saluting Germans as
they proceed toward the Bibliothek des Deutschen Museums for the
opening of Der ewige Jude on November 8, 1937.

View from the "Uferstrasse" (now Museuminsel) to the library building of the German Museum, 1937. The huge poster of the propaganda exhibition "The Eternal Jew" was illuminated at night.

The exterior facing the Isar, shown sporting Nazi flags and the logo for Der ewige Jude exhibition, was redeveloped in 1951 as a tower supporting a sundial with the eagle replaced.
Over the past decades the Deutsches Museum, one of the largest science and technology museums in the world, has carefully maintained an interpretation of its history during the Third Reich. In this portrayal, the museum was caught between the opposing poles of either cooperation with or resistance to the regime, which, in the end, meant that the museum counted itself among the victims of National Socialism.

Das Deutsche Museum in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, a new, comprehensive study of the museum in the Third Reich by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Vaupel and Dr. Stefan L. Wolff with essays by internal and external scholars, shows that this interpretation of the museum’s past is in need of thorough revision. According to this nook, the idea that the Deutsches Museum was a “purely” scientific and technological educational institution and therefore also an “apolitical” one, was nothing less than a fiction.

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the Deutsches Museum was directed by a three-man governing body (whose members were honorary ones) which was further directed by the museum founder Oskar von Miller (1855-1933). The local Munich Nazi party had been opposed to Miller as early as the end of the 1920s, especially after he had refused to allow a statue of Otto von Bismarck to be erected on museum grounds. Once the city government, which was controlled by the NSDAP, refused to support the museum’s yearly board meeting (as it had long been accustomed to do) and after Adolf Hitler refused to accept the honorary post of museum president (an honor gladly assumed by every chancellor since 1923), Miller feared he would no longer be of any service to his museum, given the altered political circumstances. He therefore resigned his post on May 7, 1933 – his 78th birthday.

His successor was to be Jonathan Zenneck (1871-1959), a physics professor at Munich’s Technical University, who had already taken on many of Miller’s responsibilities during the few months prior to the announcement. As a member of the German National People’s Party (DNVP), Zenneck sympathized with the new “national government.” He supported the Civil Service Act, which allowed for the removal of those opposed to the new regime and those who could be defined as having “Jewish ancestry.” In the spring of 1933, Zenneck was responsible for carrying out the law’s provisions among the museum staff. As a result, two employees were fired, one for political reasons, the other on racial grounds.

Having a member of the DNVP as head of the museum was not sufficient evidence to show the new regime that the museum had adequately adjusted to the altered political situation. Miller therefore installed the Munich publisher Hugo Bruckmann as the head of the governing body. Related to Miller by marriage, Bruckmann was one of the early supporters of the NSDAP and had known Hitler personally for a number of years. Bruckmann did not possess any particular qualifications for his position as the head of the museum, but he did enjoy very good connections to influential individuals in the party and the state.

After Miller’s death on April 9, 1934, museum leaders attempted to remove any reservations about the museum that might have persisted among party circles because of Miller’s earlier actions. While Miller (with Zenneck’s support) had previously been vehemently opposed to political influences of any sort, this position was quickly abandoned. Museum leaders instead sought to persuade important NS politicians to support and work for the museum. One of the men they hoped to convince was Fritz Todt, Inspector General for German Roadways who had organized the exhibition “Die Strasse” or “Roads” in Munich in 1934. Museum officials intended to use both Todt’s fame and his connections as “head engineer of the Third Reich” to redesign the museum’s exhibition on streets which would feature the politically relevant theme of the Reich’s autobahn-building efforts. Officials hoped that Todt could prove useful assistance in realizing this project, particularly in providing the necessary funds.

At the same time, museum officials sought more intensively to convince Hitler to visit the museum in an official capacity. A new temporary exhibit on “German Freestone,” was organised -- according to the Führer’s explicit wishes. This exhibit did in fact interest Hitler (whose love of architecture is well-documented) enough to persuade him to grant the museum an official visit at the beginning of April 1935. It was with some trepidation that Hugo Bruckmann led the Führer through the automobile division: it was quite out of date. But because Hitler was interested in introducing mass mobilisation to Germany, officials hoped that the exhibit could be updated and made more relevant, following the political trend of the times. Thanks to the assistance of two men who sat on the museum’s governing boards, the museum could announce that Hitler had promised two million Reichsmark for the revision of both the automobile and flight divisions. With this money, the museum announced the opening of a new building with exhibition space in 1938 and financed the new automobile exhibit. That same year, Todt’s associates finished their work on the new street exhibit. The almost exclusive focus on the German autobahn led many at the time to refer to the exhibit ironically as the “German autobahn show.” Both divisions saw a decisive move away from earlier museum practices, which focused displaying only masterpieces of science and technology. The display of a shovel that Hitler had used to break ground at the beginning of the autobahn project near Frankfurt am Main did not meet this criterion, nor did the Mercedes that was on display in the automobile division because it had once been the Führer’s.

Whilst the museum’s collections space was experiencing a revision of those exhibits that were seen as having political relevance (Miller’s practice was to do this in a historical context), after 1934 the library building housed several special exhibitions focusing specifically on contemporary technological developments, such as television or “New German Synthetic Materials.” For the first time in the museum’s history, these special exhibits were no longer based on historical criteria. Museum officials hoped with this strategy to meet the criticism of those such as Todt who had called the museum an “attic stuffed with historical artefacts” and who accused the museum of being wed to a backward-looking display policy without any connection to the real world. The library building also served as host to several other externally designed propaganda exhibits such as the infamous “The Eternal Jew” (1937).

In 1937, the three-man governing body was expanded to include five men, and Todt was one of them. Upon assuming his new role, Todt sought to use the museum as an instrument for his own political goals, especially within the confines of the National Socialist Association for German Technology (NSBDT), an organisation that he himself led. When war broke out in September 1939, however, his attention turned elsewhere. His plans remained unrealized after he died in a plane crash in 1942. Todt had hoped to build a new “House of Technology” on the Isar, directly opposite the river from the Deutsches Museum. These plans, which were never realized, sought to place various technological developments in their different political contexts. Upon attempting to integrate and incorporate the Deutsches Museum within this new institution ,Todt encountered decisive resistance from Jonathan Zenneck. The power struggle that ensued between the two of them (which was suspended once the war broke out) shows that the Deutsches Museum – beyond being a site of opportunism and conformity – was also involved in conflicts with different individuals and state organisations. In the post-war period, these conflicts were stylised into a confrontation with National Socialism in general. Those areas in which the Deutsches Museum had sought to work with the regime were forgotten and repressed.

Hitler on his first official visit to the Deutsches Museum on January 4, 1935 accompanied by Museum Board Head Hugo Bruckmann (left of Hitler). Hitler was interested with this visit especially for the congress hall, the airships, road construction, automotive and shipbuilding departments. There he was especially captivated with the model of the battleship Deutschland, which had been donated to the museum in August 1934 from the Imperial Navy Office and represented a prime specimen of the new German weapon technology.

At the entrance to the exhibition "Der ewige Jude" in November 1937 and today. Theexhibition
was held in the Library of the German Museum until January 31, 1938.
It was the largest pre-war anti-Semitic exhibit the Nazis held. It
emphasised supposed attempts by Jews to bolshevise Germany, It did
this by revealing an 'eastern' Jew - wearing a kaftan, and holding gold
coins in one hand and a whip in the other. Under his arm is a map of
the world, with the imprint of the hammer and sickle. The exhibition
attracted 412,300 visitors which was over 5,000 per day, seeing 400,000 visitors by January 1938.

SS-Hauptsturmführer
Dr. Franz Hippler was the most eager and unscrupulous among Goebbels's
film experts who knew how to arrange the most disparate clips and most
antagonistic arguments into a triumph of dialectical destructiveness. It
was he who put together the morally most perfidious, intellectually
most under­ handed, and ideologically most perverse mishmash that has
ever been produced. This was Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), made in 1940. Only human scum could bring out such a diabolical work. Together with Jud Süß (1940) and Die Rothschilds (1940), as well as the book by Hans Dieboro with the same title. Der ewige Jude raised
the pogrom mood against the Jews to boiling point. These films and a
number of other books were calculated to justify in advance the mass
murder of the European Jews.

Der ewige Jude
is certainly the "hate" picture of all time, and one of the great
examples of the way in which the film medium can be used as a
propaganda tool far greater than the printed or spoken word alone.
Fortunately, the film is inaccessible beyond a few film archives where
it is kept in the restricted division usually re- served for
pornography, which is exactly the genre to which this film belongs.

The state funeral for Hugo Bruckmann in the
courtyard of the Deutsches Museum on June 9, 1941 just before the
invasion of the Soviet Union.

Of the museum itself, Hitler had remarked June 13, 1943 that

One
of the great attractions of the Deutsches Museum in Munich is the
presence of a large number of perfectly constructed working models,
which visitors can manipulate themselves. It is not just by chance that
so many of the young people of the inland town of Munich have answered
the call of the sea.

Completed
in 1936 by architect German Bestelmeyer, this building in front of the
museum "was used during the Third Reich for meetings, exhibits,
speeches, and the state funeral of Gauleiter Adolf Wagner." (http://www.thirdreichruins.com/munich5.htm#dtmuseum)The
eagles that are allowed to continue to adorn the building were
designed by Munich artist Kurt Schmid Ehmen (1901-1968) who had
specialised in reichsadlers and swastikas (such as those found at the
"Ehrenmal" der Feldherrnhalle and Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg
and the Reich Chancellery in Berlin).

Connecting the Deutschen Museum and Kongreßsaal to the rest of the city on the other side of the Isar is the Ludwigsbruecke, over which the annual November 9 march would pass. The pylons are the only intact structure remaining of the original Ludwigsbruecke from before the war. On November 3 1935, Hitler delivered a speech at the official opening of the rebuilt Ludwig Bridge in Munich. It was his hope, he stated,

that the many sad events which this bridge had been made to suffer in the past would not be repeated in future and that the train twelve years before would hopefully be the last dismal incident on this bridge.

The Bismarckdenkmal of Fritz Behn (1878-1970) was formerly in front of
the Deutschen Museum during the Nazi era but has since been relegated
across the Isar and museum itself south of the Ludwigsbruecke on the Boschbrücke.

The largest thermometer in Germany on the Deutschen Museum's tower in 1930 and seen from the Boschbrücke today.

Standing today in 2010 where Julius Streicher leads the Blutfahne held by Jakob Grimminger in a photo from Geoff Walden's definitive site, where he states that "one of the columns at the end of the Ludwigsbrücke remains today" although I couldn't find it. According to William Shirer in Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich (67),

it
was here on the Ludwig Bridge, which leads over the River Isar toward
the centre of the city, stood a detachment of armed police barring the
route. Goering sprang forward and, addressing the police commander,
threatened to shoot a number of hostages he said he had in the rear of
his column if the police fired on his men. During the night Hess and
others had rounded up a number of hostages, including two cabinet
members, for just such a contingency. Whether Goering was bluffing or
not, the police commander apparently believed he was not and let the
column file over the bridge unmolested.

According to Hitler himself at his trial in 1924,

On
Ludendorff’s right side Dr. Weber marched, on his left, I and [Max
von] Scheubner-Richter and the other gentlemen. We were permitted to
pass by the cordon of troops blocking the Ludwig Bridge. They were
deeply moved; among them were men who wept bitter tears. People who had
attached themselves to the columns yelled from the rear that the men
should be knocked down. We yelled that there was no reason to harm these
people. We marched on to the Marienplatz. The rifles were not loaded.
The enthusiasm was indescribable. I had to tell myself: The people are
behind us, they no longer can be consoled by ridiculous resolutions.
The Volk want a reckoning with the November criminals, as far as it
still has a sense of honour and human dignity and not for slavery. In
front of the Royal Residence a weak police cordon let us pass through.
Then there was a short hesitation in front, and a shot was fired. I had
the impression that it was no pistol shot but a rifle or carbine
bullet. Shortly afterwards a volley was fired. I had the feeling that a
bullet struck in my left side. Scheubner-Richter fell, I with him. At
this occasion my arm was dislocated and I suffered another injury while
falling. I only was down for a few seconds and tried at once to get
up.

The 'cauldron' as it appears today can be seen in the background photo of the 1933 march.

The procession passes under the Isartor Gate, shown after the war and me in front today.

Entrance to the Deutsches Museum: Verkehrszentrum

View of the new, opened in 1938 automobile exhibition. At the end of the hall alongside the Nazi eagle are busts of Benz, Daimler, Maybach and Bosch. The motor vehicle department, opened in 1938 and the 1938-1940 repeatedly updated road construction department of the German Museum campaigned openly for motorising policy and the kingdom of highway construction of the Nazis.

Ruhmeshalle (Bavarian Hall of Fame)

Nearby across the Bavaria Park is the Ruhmeshalle, shown after the war and today. This is traditionally the site of Munich's Oktoberfest which during the Third Reich became Nazified.

Souvenirs added
swastikas to their depictions of the Münchner Kindl (Munich
Child),
the festival’s trademark. By 1936, swastika flags had replaced the
traditional Bavarian blue and white banners. In 1938, even the
festival’s name had changed. It was now called the Greater German
Folk Festival in honour of Austria’s recent ‘return’ to the Reich.90
Throughout Germany, Fasching (Mardi Gras) parades were similarly
infused with Nazism, nowhere more so than in Cologne, home of the
renowned Karneval. While the regime dictated that carnival organizers
had to make sure a ‘happy mood’ reigned, the most menacing face of
Nazism was readily apparent: floats carrying anti-Semitic slogans and
stereotypical representations of Jews, such as ‘Deviserich’, the Jewish
banker, joined the parade from 1935 onwards.

Semmens (65) Seeing Hitler's Germany- Tourism in the Third Reich

The
Ruhmeshalle (Bavarian Hall of Fame) in front of which stands the 19
metre high Bavaria from whose head one can have a remarkable view. The
area it's in, Versammlungsplatz, was one of the main preferential
rendezvous points of the left political spectrum since 1818. On
November 7, 1918 it was the scene of the demonstration for the end of
the Great War, leading to the collapse of the monarchy and to the
proclamation of the Free State of Bavaria. In February 1919 the place
was the starting point of the protest march against the murder of Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg. From 1922 the socialist trade unions
met here and its demonstrations on May 1 1923 were threatened by armed
National Socialists and banned in 1924, 1925 and 1932. From 1933 May 1
was taken over by the Nazis as the 'Day of German Work' on the
Theresienwiese.The Hall today houses the marble busts of noteworthy
Bavarians including a recent one of von Stauffenberg. The bust itself
appears to have been mutilated; a probable example of the debate whether
his actions in launching the July Plot were those of an hero or
villain.

NSDAP Publishing House

Thierschstraße
11-17, the former headquarters of the Reich Chief for the Press and
President of the Reich Chamber of the Press. This was whereMein Kampf and other Nazi publications were produced, including the party newspaperVolkischer Beobachter,

an
anti-Semitic gossip sheet which appeared twice a week. Exactly
where the sixty thousand marks for its purchase came from was a
secret which Hitler kept well, but it is known that Eckart and Roehm
persuaded Major General Ritter von Epp, Roehm’s commanding
officer in the Reichswehr and himself a member of the party, to
raise the sum. Most likely it came from Army secret funds. At the
beginning of 1923 the Voelkischer Beobachter became a daily, thus
giving Hitler the prerequisite of all German political parties, a
daily newspaper in which to preach the party’s gospels.

1933 edition of Mein Kampf
lent me by a student's mother. Her own grandfather had actually
read the first book and I'd love to know what the exclamation
marks and underlined passages refer to. He had been denied a
promotion in a letter I saw due to his un-national socialist
beliefs.

Bergverlag Rudolf Rother

At another publishing house, the metal grills at the office at Landshuter Allee 49 retain the swastikas:

Hitlerjugend-Heim at Mariahilfplatz 4

The site in 1934 and today where it now serves as an hotel

Site of the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (NSDDB)

One
of the responsibilities of the National Socialist Association of German
Lecturers, founded in 1935 and located at what is today
Max-Joseph-Straße 4, was to push for the dismissal of politically
undesirable university lecturers, to run the universities according to
dictatorial principles and to make the curriculum conform with Nazi
ideology. The conditions for bringing the universities into line were
favourable in Munich, for even before 1933 the National Socialist German
Students’ Association at the Technical University had held almost half
the seats on the Students’ Committee.

Universities were purged of Jewish, liberal, and social-democrat personnel
after 1933. These were harassed, dismissed,
forced into exile and retirement, and even
imprisoned. They were replaced by inexperienced and unqualified but reliable Nazi
professors. This was a terrible loss for Germany which had held a position of world
leadership in science. On the other hand,
the purge was a gain for the free world as
many scientists, such as Albert Einstein,
were more or less forced into exile. University teachers were controlled by the Nationalsozialistische-Dozentenbund (NSDB—Nazi
Lecturers League), a professional association of university lecturers designed to keep
them in line with Nazi ideology. Students
had to be members of the Nationalsozialistischen deutschen Studentenbund (NSDStB—
Nazi
Student League). The NSDStB, headed
from 1928 to 1933 by Baldur von Schirach,
was devoted to the furtherance of the Nazi
way of life among students and indoctrination with National Socialist
philosophy, and
included physical training and military drills.
The new curriculum emphasized the basic
elements of Nazi ideology: racism, nationalism, Germanic culture, duty,
loyalty to the
Führer, soldierly spirit, obedience and discipline. Students were often
required to put aside their books and spend months in military training
and labour camps. With continual rounds of marches, rallies and other
party
activities, the desperate professors had to
ease their requirements drastically in order
to graduate sufficient numbers.

The educational reforms instituted by
the Nazi regime had catastrophic results.
The traditional German humanism was re-
placed with politico-racial institutions dedicated to militarism, racial hatred and aggressive expansionism. Many young people
began to question the value of obtaining the
once-prestigious Abitur—the graduation
certificate needed to enter a university. By
the late 1930s, many students were dropping
out of school to work as craft apprentices or
industrial trainees. Education—from elementary schools to the universities—became
merely an appendage of the Propaganda
Ministry, intellectual standards declined
precipitously and a whole generation was
the victim of odious indoctrination.

LePage
(93) Hitler Youth

Reichszeugmeisterei (RZM)

The
Reich General Ordnance Depot (Reichszeugmeisterei) "was one of the
largest concrete skeleton constructions erected during the Nazi period"
(Kopleck, 73) which housed party vehicles. Today can be seen the traces
of the reichsadler above the entrance and, along the sides, surviving reliefs depicting German enterprise.

Nazi
uniforms and regalia were designed, manufactured, controlled and sold
by the Reichszeugmeisterei (RZM—central ordnance office of the NSDAP).
The Reichseugmeisterei, literally the National Material Control
Office, can be thought of as a government procurement office. The
Reichszeugmeisterei was established at almost the moment that Hitler
took over the government of Germany. By July 1934, the RZM was in place
with a director, staff and offices in Munich at Tegernseer Landstrasse
210. Officially, it had the solitary purpose of selecting suppliers and
sellers of certain NSDAP uniform-related products. It had exclusive
legal authority to design and control quality and costs of uniforms,
badges, medals and other regalia. Since its mission was on behalf of the
Nazi Party (the RZM was a branch of the Treasury Department) its
jurisdiction included material for use by both the Gliederungen der
NSDAP (Nazi party organisations) and Angeschlossende Verbände
(associated units). Secondarily, the RZM was charged with making sure
that the production of all that they ordered was carried out in “Aryan”
manufacturing plants, with materials of German origin whenever
possible. Producers authorized by the RZM were not allowed to employ
“non–Aryan” workers, and had to give preference to Nazi Party members
when promoting workers and dealers. Each firm authorized to produce or
sell RZM material was issued an RZM registration number and it was
required that the number appear on all finished products they made or
sold. The RGBI I- 1269 law promulgated on 20 December 1934 punished by
imprisonment or forced labour the illegal manufacture, wearing of Nazi
uniforms and bearing of regalia. The official RZM shops for retailing
Nazi Party badges and equipment were shown by a white metal sign with
the inevitable swastika/eagle emblem and the words, “Zum Verkauf
parteiamtlicher Gegenstände zugelassen NSDAP Reichszeugmeisterei” (sale
of official party items authorised by the National Quartermaster
Department of the German National-Socialist Workers’ Party). The RGBI
I-844 law from 26 June 1935 punished by imprisonment any person who
insulted, despised, or mocked Nazi regalia, uniforms and flags.

Rosenstraße in the city centre with flags for the Reichstag elections at the end of March 1936 and today.

In
1895 Josef Schülein established the Unionsbrauerei in Haidling which
quickly developed into one of the largest breweries of Munich. Because
Schülein was a Jew, its beer was often defamed as “Jew beer”.

Atelier Josef Thorak

Joseph Thorak was, alongside Arno Breker, the most important sculptor of the Third Reich.

Hitler
visited Thorak’s Berlin studio in 1936 and the two men discussed
“great projects.” In January 1937, Thorak wrote Adolf Wagner—a
Gauleiter and the Bavarian minister of interior, education, and
culture—and requested a new studio, reporting, of course, on his recent
meeting with Hitler.This initiative paid off, and in October, Wagner
accompanied the recently appointed professor at the Munich Academy to
the lake region fifteen kilometres southeast of Munich to inspect
potential sites. This led to the construction of (the first) studio at
Baldham, which was paid for with state funds—a sum in excess of RM
215,000.298 The initial structure, however, was soon perceived as too
small, and the following year, Hitler commissioned Albert Speer, a good
friend of Thorak’s, to design another. The new atelier was so
large—over four stories high—that it easily accommodated figures with
heights in excess of fifty feet, as was the case for the Autobahn
monument. The massive stone atelier, which postwar experts considered
razing but deemed “virtually indestructible,” cost around RM
1,500,000.300 This structure reflected the usual grand patronage of the
Nazi leaders, but also their typical means of proceeding: after the
war, the man who owned the land used for the Thorak structures claimed
that it was “earlier his family property which he had sold only under
pressure.” Such considerations were of slight importance at the time,
however, and amidst the construction of Speer’s building in February
1939, Thorak held a huge party (ein Richtfest) which attracted a throng
of Nazi Germany’s political and cultural luminaries.

The Reichssiedlung Rudolf Hess (aka "Sonnenwinkel") was built from 1936 in Pullach just outside Munich by Roderich Fick (and later Hermann Giesler). The inhabitants of the compound were mostly high-ranking members of the Stab Hess and Parteikanzlei, among them Gerhard Klopfer, Gottfried Neesse, Helmut Friedrichs, Herbert Reischauer, Edinger Ancker and others. But there were some other Party officials living there as well for instance Walter "Bubi" Schultze. Martin Bormann's house was later the living place of Reinhard Gehlen. In April 1945 most of the inhabitants fled to South Tyrolia whilst the locals plundered the vacant houses. After the war the Censorship Division moved into it after it had been a POW camp in the summer of 1945. In December 1947 the Organisation Gehlen moved in.